Computer graphical user interfaces (“GUIs”) create challenges for visually impaired users. GUIs for computers often contain densely packed information. Users execute many common tasks and actions by selecting icons or items from a menu on the GUI with a mouse. Because such display elements represent or control important functional elements, standard GUIs create difficulties for visually impaired computer users.
Portal environments are complex GUIs used to access and run multiple applications or portions of applications, simultaneously. Internet browsers are a commonly used to view a portal environment, displaying one or more portlets on computers. Simple examples of portlets include standalone applications such as stock tickers, local weather reports and the latest news all displayed on the same page in an Internet browser. A more complex set of portlets may interact with different portions of an application at the same time, such as a college registration system that displays class schedule options in one portlet and allows a student to enroll for a class in another portlet. While running more than one application simultaneously in a portal environment, wherein each portlet acts as the user interface for an application, each portlet in the portal environment defines controls available to the user. The controls available to the user may include global controls for the portal environment, controls for each the portlet and controls for each application running in a portlet.
Assistive technology tools, hereafter referred to as “AT tools,” are programs and hardware that assist the visually impaired navigate a computer's GUI. AT tools include “screen readers” which are applications that use voice synthesizers to provide audible cues to assist visually impaired computer users navigate other computer applications. Other AT tools include Braille displays and Braille keyboards that assist the visually impaired interact with a computer and computer applications. JAWS by Freedom Scientific, WINDOWEYES by GW Micro and HPR (Home Page Reader) by IBM are commercially available AT tools for the visually impaired. Screen readers help the visually impaired access common standalone applications such as spreadsheets, word processors, e-mail editors, and Internet browsers. Screen readers have certain pre-defined or native “hotkeys” to perform commonly used tasks.
Hotkeys are a sequence of keyboard keystrokes that perform actions normally performed by clicking on a menu or icon with a mouse cursor. Common hotkeys for MS WINDOWS based applications include “Control-C” for “copy,” “Control-V” for “paste” and “Control-X” for “delete.” Many applications allow users to define custom hotkeys to perform a specific task.
Hotkeys are a particularly important feature for visually impaired computer users, because visually impaired users may be unable to see and click icons or menus items with a mouse cursor, and navigating menus with the arrow keys on a keyboard is tedious. There is no universal standard, however, for assigning hotkeys to a particular action or menu item. Screen readers from different vendors do not use the same set of pre-defined hotkeys for performing the same task. Additionally, screen readers and other simultaneously running applications usually have different sets of predefined hotkeys. Complications arise when a screen reader and another application running simultaneously use the same hotkey to perform different actions. The user may have to create a custom hotkey or redefine the conflicting hotkey on the other application to resolve the conflict. One known method of defining custom hotkeys is disclosed in IBM patent application Ser. No. 11/465,844, now Pub. #20080046541, “Content Navigational Shortcuts in Portlets.” If a user migrates from one set of AT tools to another set of AT tools, such as by switching from JAWS to WINDOWEYES, new conflicts may arise because the new AT tools may have a completely different set of predefined hotkeys. Currently, there is no method for checking whether a screen reader's predefined hotkeys conflict with another simultaneously running application's predefined hotkeys. Users of screen readers would benefit from knowing that their user-defined hotkeys do not conflict with another simultaneously running application's hotkeys. Thus, a need exists for a method of comparing the hotkeys of a screen reader to the hotkeys of another simultaneously running application to determine if the screen reader's hotkeys conflict with the other simultaneously running application's hotkeys.